Charlie Stein: Virtually Yours

7 October - 4 November

Charlie Stein
Virtually Yours
Charlie Stein

Charlie Stein (b. 1986) lives and works in Berlin. She holds a postgraduate and graduate degree in Fine Art from the State Academy in Stuttgart, Germany. Furthermore, Stein holds a graduate degree in Social Sciences and English at the University of Stuttgart, and has taken courses in Chinese culture and economics at the Tongji University in Shanghai. Stein works as a guest lecturer for the School of Digital Innovation Berlin and has given lectures at Pratt Institute in New York, E-Artsup-Paris and led the seminar “Painting in the Context of Contemporary Art” in 2022 at the HfBK Hamburg. In her work Charlie Stein deals with dominant cultural aesthetics questioning existing modes of perception within the context of a highly digitized, visually overstimulated world. Her material is gathered through extensive research and translated into drawings, installations, sculptures, paintings and text. Her focus lies on social structures, digital media and contemporary forms of communication.
- Solo exhibitions include (Upcoming) Virtually Yours, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, UK (2023); (Upcoming) Memories Like Hurricanes, Kanya Kage, Berlin, Germany (2023); Artificial Tenderness, Bark Berlin Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2023); Flow My Tears, Bark Berlin Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2022); Unimate, Evelyn Drewes Galerie, Hamburg, Germany (2022); Unimate, Smac, Berlin, Germany (2021); First Day Above Ground, Bark Berlin Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2021); Portrait of a Future, Priska Pasquer Gallery, Cologne, Germany (2021); Malerei 4.0, Kunstpreis Limburg, Limburg, Germany (2019); Amerika, Oberwelt E.V., Stuttgart Germany (2018); One Show Closer to the End, Edenkoben, Germany (2017); The Dual Nature of Be, Do and Have, Delilah, NYC, USA (2017); Eye to Eye, Salon Neucologne E.V. Berlin, Germany (2015); Tea At The Carlyle, Pop Up Show, The Carlyle Hotel, New York City, USA (2015); Schluesselangst, BBK Württemberg, Stuttgart, Germany (2012).
  
  Selected Group exhibitions include Where the Wild Roses Grow, Schloss Görne, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2023); Blind Visions, Treptow Ateliers, Berlin, Germany (2022); Elb/Hängung #2, Villa am Elbhang, Hamburg, Germany (2022); Contemporary Istanbul, Ambidexter.Xyz, Istanbul, Turkey (2022); Fivel, Valerius Art Gallery, Luxembourg (2022); Wow Now, Setareh, Berlin, Germany (2022); A Portrait of Spirits, Bark Berlin, Germany, (2022); The Outside of the Inside, Bark Berlin Gallery, Germany (2021); Direkte Auktion, Various Locations, Berlin, Germany (2021); Prognose, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Germany (2021); Winds of Change NFT Exhibition, Priska Pasquer Gallery, Cologne, Germany (2021); Artificial Natures, Bark Berlin Galllery, Germany (2021); Behind the Scenes of Hidden Tracks, Schaufenster, Berlin, Germany (2021); NFT Kitties LAB, bark Berlin Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2021); Hallelujah!, God is a Woman, Valerius Gallery, Luxembourg (2021); Sotheby’s Charity Auction, Vienna (2021); Perspectives, Re-Future Lab, Berlin, Germany (2020); Echt und Flash, Sculpture Triennial, Bingen, Germany (2020).
- Highlights and Awards
  Charlie Stein’s work can be found in the collection of Telos Foundation Switzerland, the Collection of the Academy of the Arts Stuttgart, Germany, the SMAC Berlin Collection, Setareh Collection, the Collection of the China Australia Art Foundation, the Art Collection of Limburg and the Von Keltenborn Collection. Stein has been awarded with the Art Fond Foundation Berlin, Development Grant 2022; a nomination for the Villa Aurora Artist Residency in Los Angeles in 2020, the 2019 Painting 4.0 Art Prize of the City of Limburg, a nomination for the 2018 Art Prize of Wesseling; the 2018 Grant of the City of Esslingen for Cultural Development, the 2017 Residency at Herrenhaus Edenkoben; the 2016 Residency at the Cultural Academy of Tarabya; a nomination for the Karl-Schmidt-Rottluff Grant in 2016; the 2015 ACAF Residency Grant of the Australia China Art Foundation, Shanghai, China, a nomination of the 2014 Walther-Stöhrer Prize; the 2014 FöPS Prize for Social Sciences; the 2014 Residency at Trélex Residency, Switzerland; the 2013 Scholarship of the State of Baden-Württemberg to reside in Shanghai; the 2010 Klett-Passage Art Prize, Stuttgart; the 2010 DAAD Scholarship, Beijing, China; the 2008 Art Prize of the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation, Warsaw, Poland.
Virtually Yours

‘Can you fall in love with a thing, a robot, a photograph?’

Black latex gloves, wide-eyed doll-like figures, garlands of roses, pink oozing forms. Charlie Stein’s art plays on the language of seduction, fetish and digital realms to explore the boundaries between reality and the imagination, the self and the other. Virtually Yours, the artist’s first solo exhibition at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, comprises a provocative new series of paintings that consider the ways in which we articulate emotion and form attachments.
- The world that Stein paints is bright and shiny – it is a reality that has been fed through filters to create a more palatable, Instagrammable aesthetic and yet, it is also a world that is malfunctioning. We encounter an image of black latex gloves gripping a pink dripping form, reminiscent of a rose or vagina, to later find that these same elements have melted into waves of viscous gloop that are only vaguely reminiscent of their original forms. We encounter a series of young, flawless faces with full, lush lips that appear both impossibly beautiful and broken. In one work, the figure’s face is partially peeling off, in another she is drowning in a pool of water, her huge, glassy eyes turned towards us in an expression of total passivity.
  
  These figures, created partly using digital tools that allow Stein to manipulate and warp the facial features, draw on the phenomenon of the ‘Instagram Face’, a cyborgian amalgam forged by social media and plastic surgery and wider aesthetic ideals. They appear both other-worldly and familiar in a way that invites if not quite empathy then understanding. In the portrait of a woman half consumed by a garland of pink roses, for example, we might laugh at the over-the-top attempt to transform oneself quite literally into a prize, an object while also recognising a very real desire to be admired. As Stein puts it: these works are reflections of ‘the very weird and constant expectations that are placed on women.’
- While there has been much discussion around the ways in which the digital world, and in particular social media, distances us from reality and collapses individuality, Stein sees its potential as both an equalising and liberating space. The ways in which Instagram filters neutralise the face, turning us all into a singular image, might, she suggests, also highlight our shared humanity, while the lack of boundaries between digital materials and spaces allows us to experiment with more fluid forms of expression and connection. The show’s title, Virtually Yours, plays on this idea of openness by imagining a sign-off that implies intimacy (digital or otherwise) while also holding something back. For Stein, her broken, melting faces and forms are less about failure than resisting social expectations that demand that we look, behave or feel in any particular kind of way.
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Charlie Stein: Virtually Yours

Charlie Stein

Charlie Stein

Virtually Yours

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